A typological study of vowel interactions in Basque
Varun. deCastro-Arrazola1,2, Edoardo Cavirani1, Kathrin Linke1,2 and Francesc Torres-Tamarit3
1Meertens Institute (Amsterdam), 2Leiden University, 3UMR 7023 (CNRS/Paris 8) varun.decastro-arrazola@meertens.knaw.nl
1. Summary
▶ The phonological micro-variation found in vowel interactions in Basque is studied.
▶ We combine formal phonological theories (Element Theory, Turbidity Theory [1]), corpora and computational tools.
▶ The account can generate grammars for all the robustly
attested patterns but fails to generate the unattested ones.
2. Background: nominal inflection in Basque
▶ If stem ends in consonant:
▷ uninflected NP: [gis«on] ‘man’
▷ singular absolutive DP: [gis«ona] ‘the man’ (no variation)
▷ singular definite absolutive suffix = /-a/
▶ If stem ends in vowel, dialectal variation:
▷ /alaba-a/ ‘the daughter’: alabaa, alabea, alabia, alabie
▷ /seme-a/ ‘the son’: semea, semia, semie
▷ /idi-a/ ‘the ox’: idia, idie
▶ Disclaimers:
▷ back vowels /o, u/ behave roughly as their front counterparts;
our typology only considers stems ending in /a, e, i/.
▷ consonant epenthesis has been ignored: e.g. we have coded [idiSa] and [idia] as ia.
▷ forms with second vowel deletion (/seme-a/ → [seme]) are excluded from the typology.
▷ the processes are productive, but can get blocked under some morpho-syntactic conditions.
3. Data
▶ We combine data from two partially-overlapping sources [2, 3].
▶ Each of ca. 170 Basque-speaking locations is characterised as a set of 3 codes, which describe the behaviour of the vowels
/a,e,i/ when followed by the suffix /-a/.
▶ From a logical point of view, the attested codes can be combined in 24 unique ways (i.e. 24 potential dialects).
▶ 9 are robustly attested; 4 are marginal; 11 are unattested.
PatternID /a-a/ /e-a/ /i-a/ Frequency
3 aa ia ia 70
24 ie ie ie 23
1 aa ea ia 18
2 aa ea ie 18
15 ia ia ia 15
8 ea ea ie 12
16 ia ia ie 5
4 aa ia ie 4
6 aa ie ie 4
7 ea ea ia 1
14 ia ea ie 1
18 ia ie ie 1
20 ie ea ie 1
PatternID /a-a/ /e-a/ /i-a/ Frequency
5 aa ie ia 0
9 ea ia ia 0
10 ea ia ie 0
11 ea ie ia 0
12 ea ie ie 0
13 ia ea ia 0
17 ia ie ia 0
19 ie ea ia 0
21 ie ia ia 0
22 ie ia ie 0
23 ie ie ia 0
4. Constraints
(1) Proj(E): Assign a violation mark for every pronounced E that does not correspond to a projection of E.
(2) Pron(E): Assign a violation mark for every projected E that does not correspond to a pronunciation of E.
(3) OCP(E): Assign a violation mark for every pair of adjacent root nodes that pronounce E.
(4) OCP(root): Assign a violation mark for every pair of adja- cent root nodes that pronounce the same set of E’s.
(5) Spread(E): Assign a violation mark for every pronounced E that does not spread (i.e. that is not pronounced by a neighboring root node).
(6) Spread(E)’: Let the set S of projected E’s by a root node be identical to the set {E}, i.e. {E} ⊆ S ∧ S ⊆ {E}. Assign a violation mark for every pronounced E ∈ S that does not spread.
5. Rankings
|A| |A|
• - •
|I|
/e - a/
→ |A| |A|
• •
|I|
[i a]
Mid vowel raising:
▶ underpronunciation of an underlying |A|.
▶ OCP(|A|) ≫ Pron(|A|)
|A| |A|
• - •
/a - a/
→ |A| |A|
• •
|I|
[e a]
Low vowel raising:
▶ pronounciation of a non-projected |I| together with the projected |A|.
▶ OCP(root) ≫ Proj(|I|)
|A|
• - •
|I|
/i - a/
→ |A|
• •
|I|
[i e]
Low vowel assimilation:
▶ pronunciation of |I| by both its own root node and the suffixal root node.
▶ Spread(|I|) ≫ OCP(|I|)
▶ The opaque dialects are formalized as the outranking of Spread(|I|) by the less stringent Spread(|I|)’:
PatternID /a-a/ /e-a/ /i-a/ Constraint ranking
16 ia ia ie OCP(root) ≫ Proj(|I|) OCP(|A|) ≫ Pron(|A|)
Spread(|I|)’ ≫ OCP(|I|) ≫ Spread(|I|) 4 aa ia ie Proj(|I|) ≫ OCP(root)
OCP(|A|) ≫ Pron(|A|)
Spread(|I|)’ ≫ OCP(|I|) ≫ Spread(|I|)
6. References
[1] M Goldrick. Turbid output representations and the unity of opacity. In M. Hirotani, A. Coet- zee, N. Hall, and J.-Y. Kim, editors, Proc. of the North East Linguistic Society, volume 30, pages 231–245. GLSA, Amherst, MA, 2001.
[2] J-I Hualde and I Gaminde. Vowel interaction in basque: A nearly exhaustive catalogue. Studies in the Linguistic Sciences, 28(1):41–77, 1998.
[3] G Aurrekoetxea and X Videgain, editors. Euskararen herri hizkeren atlasa, 5. Izen morfologia.
Euskaltzaindia, Bilbo (EH, Spain), 2013.
